


Off By Two

by astolat



Series: Captain America works [12]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bears, Camping, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Wilderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 01:23:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2005623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astolat/pseuds/astolat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Who sent you?” Steve said. </p><p>“Colonel Rhodes tapped me, specifically,” Wilson said. “But pretty much all your friends were behind the idea.”</p><p>“All my friends are dead,” Steve said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off By Two

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Плюс-минус два // Off By Two](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10224683) by [kalathea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalathea/pseuds/kalathea)



> With many thanks to giddygeek and Cesperanza and therienne!

“Hey, man,” the hiker said, a dark silhouette peering down from the top of a boulder on the eastern side of the campsite. There was something strange about his outline, and then he jumped down from the top of the boulder, coming out of the early-morning glare, and Steve realized the guy wasn’t a hiker after all: he was a soldier. A tall black man, holding himself with the easy looseness of a trained fighter, a lot of lean muscle packed onto his arms and shoulders. Some kind of specialized goggles over his eyes, maybe for targeting; a couple of guns in holsters on his thighs, utility belt slung around his waist, a metal-shell backpack with heavy-duty padded straps. His clothes were unmarked, a black t-shirt and black fatigue pants with no rank or insignia, but he was absolutely military-trained. Somebody had sent him.

“What do you want?” Steve said flatly.

The guy put the goggles up on his head. “Hey. I’m Sam Wilson. Nice to meet you.”

“What do you want?” Steve repeated. He wasn’t in the mood to make friends.

Wilson sighed. “To find out how you’re doing. Bring you back in if possible. That kind of thing.”

Right. _That_ kind of thing. “Who sent you?”

“Colonel Rhodes tapped me, specifically,” Wilson said. “But pretty much all your friends were behind the idea.”

“All my friends are dead,” Steve said, and didn’t add _except one_ , because right now the only people who knew that were people he could and would shoot on sight, and he was fine keeping it that way.

“Ouch,” Wilson said. “Kinda harsh there.”

“If you were looking for nice, I’m fresh out.” Steve swung the shield down off his back and settled it on his arm. “Let’s get this over with.” Wilson didn’t make a move, just stood there staring at him. “What?” Steve said. “Thinking better of it?”

“Dude,” Wilson said slowly, “What do you think I’m going to do? Shoot you? You’re Captain America. I would’ve had a poster of you on my wall when I was nine if my mom had let me get away with that kind of thing.”

Steve snorted and slung the shield back away. “So what _were_ you planning to do?”

Wilson shrugged. “Ask politely.”

“Okay,” Steve said. “The answer’s no. Now you can leave.”

“Well, that I can’t do,” Wilson said. “I’ve got a reputation to think of, man. I’ve never gone after a guy and not brought him in.”

Steve turned back to the camp he’d been breaking down. If Wilson tried to jump him from behind, he’d handle it. He’d already folded up the tent; the water was done purifying. He downed his antibiotics and painkiller with a couple of swallows of the bitter water and checked the bandage around his arm. The blood hadn’t soaked through overnight; he’d leave it until the evening. He put the first aid kit into his pack and crammed the sleeping bag on top.

Wilson just sat on a rock the whole time, watching him and looking over Steve’s supplies like he was tallying them and coming up short, which he probably was. He had his head cocked, frowning a little and puzzled. Steve didn’t feel any need to enlighten him. He hooked the shield on, then heaved the pack up onto his shoulders.

“Dude, I think I just heard some stitches pop,” Wilson said. “Are you sure this is the best time for a hiking trip?”

“I’d have cleared my plans with SHIELD’s HR department, but I’m pretty sure most of them were working for Hydra,” Steve said. He took a last swig off his canteen and put it back on his belt. “You’re welcome to try and keep up if you want,” he said, and headed off onto the trail at an easy jog.

Wilson did try. He was a pretty good runner, good wind. His pack was small, not a quarter the size of Steve’s, which begged the question how _he_ was planning to sleep and eat; but Steve wasn’t going to make that his problem. He had plenty of his own right now, starting with Wilson himself, and it was time to make _that_ one go away. Steve’s legs were warmed up and his boots felt good on his feet. He started picking up the pace — little by little; he wasn’t above enjoying the sound of Wilson panting along behind him, falling back.

Steve stopped once he’d opened up a few hundred yards’ gap, turned and waved a jaunty goodbye. Wilson had sputtered to a stop, bent over with hands resting on his knees, gasping. He lifted his head sideways to shoot Steve a glare. Steve smirked back. “Have a nice day!” he called. Then he turned and started running for real, pounding away the dirt, and Wilson vanished away behind him almost at once.

#

The heavy quiet of the woods settled hard on Steve’s shoulders again. The company hadn’t been welcome, but Wilson had been the first person Steve had talked to in the seven days since he’d left the Army-Navy store with all his gear. He’d seen a few real hikers at a distance now and then, but he’d made a point of avoiding them. The silence felt strange, uneasy; he kept listening for footfalls, for the soft breathing from the Howling Commandos ranged out close behind him. For Bucky’s presence on his heels.

Steve stopped a few times to check his maps and compass, and once to wolf down an MRE and half his canteen. He was hungry and he was going to stay hungry, since he couldn’t carry enough food to eat a full ration and be sure of finding the Hydra base without having to hike back out and lose days, maybe even a week. He’d manage.

And he’d manage whatever he found, too. He didn’t know exactly what that was going to be. He’d dragged what little intel he had about the base out of Rumlow in his hospital bed, and while Rumlow hadn’t been in any condition to get creative, he also hadn’t been in a condition to provide a lot of detail beyond the critical one: this was where they’d kept the Winter Soldier between _missions_. Steve hoped Bucky wouldn’t be there — he hoped Bucky had remembered enough not to go back to them. But he was betting he’d at least find some of Bucky’s — _handlers_ — and they’d have some of the answers he needed. Steve didn’t like roughing people up, but in this case he was ready to make exceptions. As many exceptions as necessary. He was going to find out what they’d done to Bucky, he was going to find out how to fix it, and then he was going to find Bucky and take care of him. Nothing else was even an option.

And he didn’t want any _help_ to do it, either. It made him so angry he felt sick to his stomach when he thought about it, that he’d just spent the last two years wearing a uniform for the people who’d been keeping Bucky — tortured, brainwashed, locked up like an animal and only taken out when they wanted him to kill someone. If it hadn’t been for the explosion on the third helicarrier — if the mask hadn’t been hit with burning debris, so Bucky had tossed it aside —

He could’ve _killed_ Bucky, and not known. He might never have known. Or maybe he’d have done it, and taken the mask off after — Steve swallowed down bile.

He wasn’t trusting anyone anymore, not after this. Steve wasn’t even prepared to assume that Fury hadn’t known. When he’d come banging on Steve’s door with the Winter Soldier on his tail, he’d sure made a big point about how dangerous the guy was and how he had to be neutralized if he showed up again. Natasha had given him goddamn _tips_ about the kind of weapons the Soldier liked to use; Hill had handed him a file with detailed intel on that metal arm. And he was supposed to believe none of them had known who the man underneath was. Right.

He didn’t know why Rhodes had gotten involved in sending somebody after him, and he didn’t care, either. Maybe his pal Stark wanted to use the collapse of SHIELD as another attempt to start up his secret Avengers clubhouse. Well, he could do it on his own. Steve was done with all of it. Bucky needed him. The rest of the world could go to hell.

The anger helped him build up a head of steam, a good sauce for the MRE that hadn’t really filled him up. He covered another thirty miles in about four hours, zig-zagging over the quadrant. Not a trace of Hydra activity. He slowed for a cool-down as he got close to the area he’d marked out for the night’s camp. Dinner was going to be half a powerbar, and his brain was playing tricks on him: he was smelling pizza, fresh pizza. Then he pushed through some bushes into a clearing and stopped short. Wilson was sitting on a log, in front of a small fire, eating a slice of pepperoni. There were three boxes of pizza at his feet.

Steve stared at him. Wilson swallowed his bite, licked his lips. “Hey,” he said. “What took you so long, dude? Pizza’s getting cold.”

Steve looked around blankly. According to the maps, there wasn’t a road or a town anywhere closer than fifty miles. There wasn’t even really a trail around: they were deep in back country. “How the hell.”

Wilson snorted. “Yeah, cause I’m telling you, Mister ‘Have A Nice Day.’ Hope you enjoyed your hike. If you don’t like pepperoni, I got plain and mushroom, too.”

“Yeah?” Steve said. “Did you sprinkle on some tranquilizer with the garlic salt?”

“Oh, excuse you,” Wilson said indignantly. “I guess I’ll just have to eat all this pizza myself, then.” He made to hook the pizza boxes back towards him with a heel, and Steve’s stomach couldn’t take it anymore; he stalked across the clearing and grabbed the top box and pulled out two pepperoni slices together, stacked them, and dived in. It _was_ mostly cold, and it sure wasn’t Brooklyn pizza, but seven days on half rations more than made up for that.

Wilson even had a six-pack cooling in the stream; he passed Steve a can and cracked one open himself. Steve took a long pull to wash down his first two slices, grabbed another two. “What kind of a bounty hunter are you, anyway? You always lure your targets in with pizza?”

Wilson gave him an exasperated look. “Man, aren’t you supposed to be all apple pie and sunshine or something? Where’d you come up with _bounty hunter_?”

“You said so!” Steve said. “You’ve always brought in every man you went after.”

“Yeah, as a PJ!” Wilson said. “Pararescue, in case they didn’t have us back in your day.”

“Oh,” Steve said, feeling a tiny bit ashamed: he did know about the pararescue program. Two of the SHIELD security guys who’d died getting him onto the third helicarrier had been pararescue vets. “Which unit?” he asked, by way of apology.

“The 58th,” Wilson said. “But I’ve been out for a couple years now, working down at the VA.”

PJ also explained how Wilson had gotten ahead of him again: he must have called in a chopper for a lift, and he’d made a jump down. The pack had to be his chute, already folded up again. Maybe a parafoil? Steve looked up and around: it must have been a hell of a landing, with the solid tree cover everywhere, but a good man could’ve done it. He was just surprised he hadn’t heard the chopper at all. “How’d you get roped into this, then?”

“When the carriers came down, I headed to the river to help with the search and rescue. I bumped into Colonel Rhodes down there trying to handle the cleanup, sort out the good guys from the bad guys.” Wilson shook his head. “Hell of a mess.”

“I missed that part of it.”

“Yeah, you were kinda blown up at the time,” Wilson said. “Nobody was expecting you to be taking off for a scenic cross-country expedition a week later.” He said it neutrally, but there was still a question in his voice.

“I heal quick,” Steve said, cutting off that line of discussion. He pulled the mushroom pie out and went for three slices at once that time.

They ate in silence for a bit. Steve polished off the mushroom slices, licked his fingers, and drank the rest of the beer. He heaved a deep breath: he still didn’t want Wilson on his ass, but he didn’t have to be a jerk to someone who was clearly one of the good guys. “Look,” he said quietly, “I’m sorry for giving you a hard time, and I appreciate the thought. But I don’t need rescuing.”

“Uh huh,” Wilson said. “You’re just on a nice relaxing walk in the woods, alone with your internal injuries and about half your daily caloric needs.”

“So you’re just going to keep showing up to feed me pizza?” Steve said.

Wilson shrugged. “You want Chinese next time?”

“You’re going to be at this a while,” Steve said.

“I’ve got time off work,” Wilson said. He looked around. “Nice scenery. I never really did camping as a kid, but it beats the survival course.”

Steve gave up. If Wilson really wanted to be his personal food delivery service for a while, he could live with that: he still had a long hard search ahead of him. He got another three slices out of the box.

He did heal fast, but he was a long way from a hundred percent yet, and the half rations hadn’t been helping that, either. After he’d polished off two pizzas, his body made clear in no uncertain terms that all it wanted right now was to crash for some repair work. He forced himself sluggishly through the motions of setting up his camp; Wilson pitched in, which sped things up, and Steve grudgingly said, “I hope you don’t snore,” as he climbed into his sleeping bag on one side of the tent, leaving enough room for another.

“Yeah, I don’t think you’re going to notice if I do,” Wilson said. Steve heard it from far away, down a long dim tunnel. His eyes were already closing, and he couldn’t quite manage a comeback; anyway, to be fair, Wilson was probably right.

#

He jerked awake to the sound of steady rain thrumming against the sides, and Wilson’s low steady voice saying, “Steve, it’s okay. It’s June 7, 2014. You’re in a tent in Yellowstone. I’d tell you why if I had a clue. You’re safe, Steve. There’s nobody coming at us. Just a thunderstorm.” Wilson’s hand was hovering over his arm, not quite touching, and a distant rumble of thunder in the distance said the storm was passing over.

“I’m awake,” Steve said. Most of the dream details were already fading, just the bitter taste of sorrow and pain left behind. He’d been dreaming about the train again, but this time when Bucky had fallen, he’d been reaching out a silver arm, and his face had been snarling and full of rage.

“You have nightmares a lot?” Wilson said. His body was a warm solid presence stretched out in his bag, comforting despite all Steve’s better judgement.

“Lot of vets do,” he said shortly.

“Yeah, we do,” Wilson said. “There’s a few things that work to get them to ease off. You want, I’ll tell you about them sometime.”

“Drugs don’t work that well on me,” Steve said.

“Not drugs,” Wilson said. “Just some mental techniques. Writing stuff down, visualizing a new dream, that kind of thing.” He paused and added, “You know, I can actually feel you being skeptical at me from over there. The stuff works, dude.”

“From personal experience?” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Wilson said quietly. “You bet.”

Steve instinctively wanted to ask, but he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want a friend; he sure as hell didn’t want a savior, another person who was out to pull him back into the world, into the problems other people had decided were important — the problems that those people thought justified any means to solve.

Anyway, Wilson was already yawning, settling back down. “Get some more rest,” he said. “It’s only midnight.” It felt like the night had already been a lot longer.

In the morning, Steve got up rubbing grainy sleep out of his eyes and found Wilson typing on his cellphone out in the clearing. “Reporting in?” he said, with an edge. Wilson just looked at him and held the phone out.

Steve took it: Wilson had been using the one bar of cell service to text back and forth with someone named Sarah, who had just sent him a low-res picture of a cute gap-toothed five-year-old girl beaming ear to ear, clutching a giant double-armful of small toy plastic ponies in weird colors. The text above it said _Ruthie says thx to her fav and best and most awesome uncle evr & yr forgiven for missing the party_.

“I promise she’s not a spy in the afternoons after kindergarten,” Wilson said.

“Sorry,” Steve said, handing it back, but he couldn’t help adding pointedly, “You could’ve made it.”

“That’s all right,” Wilson said. “I’ve got the limited-edition Captain America pony with me, you’re going to have to autograph it for her. Not that she’s really going to care about you next to Spangled Starwing, but I’ve got a duty.”

Steve stared at him. “You’re making that up.”

“Would I lie to you?” Wilson opened up one of the pockets of his belt and waved a plastic pony at him. It had a long flowing red mane and tail, with tiny blue glitter stars all over and a picture of the shield in glitter on each flank. “Seriously, your merchandising is out of control. What did you even sign back in 1943?”

“I wish I knew,” Steve said, looking the toy over in almost fascinated horror.

They ate powerbars for breakfast and broke the camp, and Steve heaved up the pack. He looked at Wilson. “Feel like another light jog this morning?” he said blandly.

Wilson glared at him. “I can’t believe Captain America’s such a little shit. It’s like my whole childhood being destroyed here.”

He did his best again anyway, for a good half-hour, but Steve pushed the pace some more and finally Wilson tapped out. “Okay,” he said, wheezing, “I’m done. Tell me where you’re going to be tonight if you want a fortune cookie.”

Steve almost felt a little sorry leaving him behind, but he needed to cover more ground to stick to his schedule; he had to get the rest of this valley today. He also didn’t want to explain why he was criss-crossing back and forth so much. His gut told him Wilson was on the up and up, but his gut had been pretty spectacularly wrong about a lot of things lately, so he wasn’t going to rely on that. Anyway, Wilson didn’t have to be Hydra to cause a problem. He’d report in to someone when he caught his chopper later today, and Steve didn’t want any more assistance showing up.

He had to admit, though, he didn’t mind coming into camp that night to find a fire and four huge cartons of lo mein and fried rice and beef and broccoli waiting for him, and he didn’t even mind company to eat it with. Okay, he could go further; he was _glad_ for the company. It was nice to hear a voice outside his own head, sitting on the mountain ridge looking out over the next valley, endless stars sprayed across the clear black sky overhead; and Wilson was easy to be with. Almost too easy. “How’d you get into this kind of thing?” Steve asked, before he remembered he didn’t want to know.

Wilson was whittling down two long sticks with a knife. “Bad judgment?” he said, joking. “My dad was a minister. He got shot trying to mediate some gang violence when I was about fifteen. It messed me up for a while.” He shrugged a shoulder. “My grades slipped, I started getting into fights. My mom got to the end of her rope after a couple of years and told me she was shipping me out to some white-bread boarding school. One of my friends told me I should just enlist instead. So I did.” He smiled up at Steve, wry. “And here I am.” He held out one of the cleaned sticks. Steve took it, puzzled, and then Wilson brought out a bag of marshmallows. “You guys do s’mores back in the day?”

Steve couldn’t help grinning. “Not in Brooklyn we didn’t,” he said, but Morita had gotten a bag of marshmallows in a care package once, and he’d saved them to bring out in the field. They’d done them up with plain crackers and the horrible chocolate from their ration and made a happy gruesomely sticky mess of themselves, in a ruined barn still smelling of pigs under the damp straw, about fifty miles inside Nazi-held territory.

He found himself telling Sam about it as they squashed together their own, hot marshmallow guts dripping over the dirt and burning their fingers. It was the first time since waking up that he’d told anyone anything about the war. About any of the guys. He’d been afraid it would hurt too much to talk about them. Instead, he almost felt like they were here again with him, as if any of them might suddenly walk into the campfire circle and demand to know why he was being a pig and eating all the damn marshmallows. Tears prickled his eyes, and he crammed another s’more into his mouth as an excuse to stop talking.

But the warmth stayed with him, an unwilling gladness. He woke softly and gradually the next morning, lying inside the tent with Sam breathing evenly next to him, the sound relaxing something deep in him: a promise of safety and comfort. And then he came awake enough to remember that the promise was a lie, and he rolled himself up and out of the lean-to fast, angry at himself, at Sam, who pushed up sleepily, yawning, saying, “What time — holy shit!” he yelled. Steve turned around and dived frantically to one side as the ten-foot-tall grizzly bear dropped the marshmallow-stained log it had been licking, and took a roaring swipe at him.

“Hey! Hey!” Sam was shouting, throwing a handful of rocks at the bear even as he scrambled out, a crazy thing to do, but the bear wasn’t having any of it: it charged straight at Steve again, and he didn’t have time to even plant his feet before seven hundred pounds of angry roaring fur and muscle slammed right into him. He managed to clamp its jaws shut before it could bite his face off, but it had a hell of a lot of momentum, shoving him back as it thrashed its head around trying to get him to let go, and abruptly Steve ran out of ground. He dangled off the edge of the overlook by the bear’s muzzle for one moment, long enough to think, _shit, this is going to hurt_ , and then he was falling, the sheer cliff wall racing by him in a blur of brown and grey.

He managed to flip over and spread his arms and legs wide, trying to slow down, squinting his streaming eyes to see if he could spot anything to aim for — water, mud, soft brush cover. It didn’t look good, nothing but a lot of jagged bare rock, and then there was a muffled roaring sound behind him and Sam slammed into his back, wrapping his arms around his chest. Steve locked his own arms over Sam’s, even as he thought in despair, _not enough time for a chute!_ with the ground racing up towards them. But instead the ground slowed and slowed some more and then started to fall back away, the cliff wall running in reverse.

They shot up past the campsite — still full of angry bear — and Sam set him gently down on his feet on another flat ledge, a few hundred feet further up. Steve turned around and stared, still shaking with adrenaline. Sam was standing there smirking at him, with — his open _wings_ behind him, huge wide-spread wings made of bright steel and thin mesh.

Steve stared some more, and then he managed to say, “So that’s why I never heard the chopper.”

Sam laughed. “I was wondering how you thought I was getting ahead of you.” He made a shrugging motion and the wings folded themselves compactly back into the metal pack. He leaned to peer over the edge. “Dude, I can’t believe you tried to fight a bear.”

“I think the bear tried to fight _me_ ,” Steve said.

“I think the bear won,” Sam said. “Damn, that thing’s big.”

Steve leaned over for a look, too. The bear was mauling its way angrily around the campsite, ripping up the tent and shoving its nose into his backpack. He sighed as it came out with a powerbar in a foil wrapper. “There goes breakfast.”

“Better the powerbars than _us_ ,” Sam said. “I am never making s’mores again.”

They spent the next two hours sitting on the edge of the cliff watching the grizzly tear apart all their stuff. “Where’s the pony?” Steve asked half-hopefully.

“Right here,” Sam said, patting the belt slung around his waist. “Safe and sound.”

“You grabbed the _pony_ before you came after me,” Steve said.

“I like my niece,” Sam said. “You on the other hand seem to be kind of a jerk. Also the belt’s got my medical gear,” he added. “Given your track record of getting shot at, blown up, drowned, half-starved, and eaten by bears, I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t find some way to pancake yourself before I could reach you.”

“I’m still here, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Steve said, giving him an elbow poke in the side.

“Wonders never cease,” Sam said, and grinned at him broad and dazzling, mouth framed by his narrow beard, sunlight in his warm eyes, and Steve couldn’t help grinning back at him, glad without meaning to be. His heart was still pounding its way back down from the near-death buzz of adrenaline under his skin, he was still breathing hard, sweating; he couldn’t stop smiling, and staring at Sam’s mouth, and his heart wasn’t actually slowing down a whole lot, and then Sam said low and smoky, “Keep looking at me like that and find out what happens,” and a knot tied itself up in Steve’s stomach as he realized Sam meant — Sam would — and he _wanted_ —

Steve jerked his eyes away, feeling hot and tense and strange. He wanted, he wanted with a helpless animal hunger, as starved as he had been for food: just thinking about it, about Sam’s hands on his skin, pushing up under his shirt, touching him — holding him — He shut his eyes and pressed his fist against them.

“Hey,” Sam said gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Hey. I’m sorry, man. Bad timing, huh?”

Steve gave a harsh barking laugh. “You could say that.”

Sam squeezed gently. “Consider it withdrawn. I’m not here to make things harder.”

“Why _are_ you here?” Steve said, tiredly, dropping his hand. “Following me around the back end of nowhere for no good reason? This is a hell of a favor for someone who’s not even your CO anymore.”

“I’d do a lot for Colonel Rhodes,” Sam said, “but I’m not here for him, man. I’m here for you. I don’t know exactly what you’re carrying, but I know what it’s like to have baggage. And Steve,” his voice going gentle, “I know that when you walk away from everyone who’d give you a hand, that’s bad news.” He paused and said, “I’d be glad to help, if you’d let me.”

Steve swallowed and looked back down over the cliff. The bear had finally given up, leaving a trail of wreckage behind it as it swayed off into the woods. “Looks like we can go down now,” he said.

Sam didn’t push. He nodded. “Okay,” he said, standing up, offering Steve a hand. “Let’s go check out the damage.”

#

It took most of the day to salvage and repair whatever hadn’t just been ruined. The tent was a total loss, huge rents clawed in both sides, and the sleeping bags were — Steve pulled up a loose flap and ducked his head inside to look at them and backed out just as fast, covering his mouth. “Ugh.”

“Don’t tell me the bear pooped on the bags,” Sam said.

Steve looked at him. “The bear pooped on the bags.”

“Okay, now that’s just mean,” Sam said.

The pot was okay, and so was his knife and folding shovel, the water filtration tablets, a few powerbars. Most of the MREs were broken open, and his clothes were a total gnawed-up loss, including all his spare socks, one of which had ended up somehow hanging from a branch way out over the overlook. The pack frame was bent and dented. It was a hell of a mess. Steve finished laying everything out, looked down at it, and sighed. He was pretty sure he could manage at night just covering up with leaves, and at least he had a lot less weight now, so he could make do lugging the pack like a duffel. But he wasn’t getting through the rest of the park without a resupply run, that was for damn sure. He’d lose another week at least.

“All right,” Sam said, looking up at the sun. “It’s about five hours round trip to the nearest town. I’ll see what I can do. I don’t know how much luck I’m going to have with finding gear or MREs, it’s tourist season and a lot of the places around here have been pretty well cleaned out already. What’s your size?”

“You don’t have to,” Steve said.

“You’re absolutely right,” Sam said. “I can just fly off and leave your ass here to get eaten by another bear. You going to tell me what size underwear you need, or do you want me to guess based on ogling?”

Steve laughed, surprising himself; he’d thought it was going to be hard and awkward, not something they could joke about. He told Sam his sizes, they picked a rendezvous point just on the other side of the mountain, and Sam took off, adding, “And you stay _away_ from cliff edges while I’m gone.”

Even just after a few hours, it was suddenly too-quiet without him. Steve packed up the usable stuff, and dug a hole to bury the rest. It was hard and sweaty work in the sun, and he was already sticky with dried sour post-adrenaline sweat. He humped the unwieldy pack the short distance over the ridge to the other side and found the waterfall they’d picked as their meeting place: just a boring short one that the tourist guidebooks called _not worth the seven hour climb_ , barely a five-foot-high trickle over the rock, but it collected into a deep little pool at the bottom. It was bitterly icy cold with snow melt, but Steve felt so disgusting he stripped naked and plunged in anyway, gritting his teeth and scrubbing himself with handfuls of sand from the floor.

Sam winged in for a landing about ten minutes later, carrying a couple of sacks of stuff, like a cross between an angel and Santa Claus. “Damn,” he said, panting, folding up the wings and shaking his arms out. “You don’t appreciate the engineering behind a gear kit until you’ve got to carry it all the hard way.” He shrugged off his pack with a groan. “Man, I should’ve brought along a hot shower and a masseuse.”

“Water’s nice if you want to rinse off,” Steve said, as innocently as he could. Sam gave him a raised eyebrow, and then he said, “I guess I wouldn’t mind a dip,” and stood up and — stripped, peeling his shirt off over his head and showing off a hell of a nice set of home-grown muscles, strong heavy thighs and a narrow waist, and Steve was abruptly glad the water was horribly cold and then realized he’d just invited Sam in with him, and maybe this hadn’t been the very best prank he’d ever come up with. His breath came short as Sam reached up to skim off his briefs — Steve realized he needed to stop looking, except it was too late, because Sam was stepping out of them naked and—

Sam stopped on the edge of the pool and fixed a stern look on him. “Okay, seriously,” he said. “On a scale from Miami to Antarctica, how pissed off am I going to be when I get in this water?”

“It’s fine,” Steve said, trying to convince himself he wasn’t staring, he was just — looking in Sam’s direction, and then Sam said, “Okay,” and jumped in and came up spluttering and yowled at the top of his lungs. “Rogers, you are a goddamn lying liar,” he yelled, and tackled him down into the water.

“I didn’t mean to!” Steve yelped, thrashing his way back up coughing, “I was — distracted! By your — ”

“ _That’s_ the excuse you’re using on me? Here I am being mature,” Sam said, doing his best to try and shove Steve’s head back underwater, “ignoring you pulling a goddamn Blue Lagoon money shot on me, all naked under a waterfall—”

Steve managed to hook an ankle around Sam’s leg and pull it out from under him, and they went down together in a huge flailing splash.

They climbed out coughing and shivering just as the edge of the mountain’s shadow finished creeping over the campsite and blocking the last of the sun. Their clothes, heaped up on the bank of the pool, were all soaked through. “ _You_ are making the fire,” Sam said, teeth almost chattering.

He’d brought noodle soup cups and oatmeal and a few things like MREs except civilian and more dubious-looking, and a dozen powerbars along with socks and underwear. “No luck on the tent front,” he said, “but I got a big tarp, and as for sleeping bags — ” He unrolled the one bag he’d found: bright pink Hello Kitty, just the right size for a well-grown six year old.

They hung the clothes up near the fire to dry, boiled water and drank the hot soup to warm up. They rigged the tarp into a low lean-to with branches and made a floor of leaves under the sleeping bag, to get them off the bare rock, and as the fire went down and the night chill got deeper, they crawled into the nest together in the new underwear and socks and nothing else. Steve had spent the whole evening trying hard not to think about Sam’s smooth wet naked body sliding against his in the pool. They were lying so close in the narrow space; he had to hold himself stiffly right at the edge of the bag to keep from touching, and cold air kept creeping in around the edges of the tarp and nipping at his bare skin. Their breath was showing white in the air. Sam was shivering once in a while next to him.

Steve shut his eyes tight and tried to sleep. It was hard; he was cold, drifting uneasily in and out, and then he came out of a doze with Sam’s hand on his arm. “Hey, man,” Sam said, “I realize this sounds like the oldest trick in the book, but I’m getting too cold. We need to huddle up some.”

“Right,” Steve said. “Okay. How do you—”

It had gotten too dark and he couldn’t see Sam anymore, but he could hear the wry grin in his voice. “Big spoon or little spoon?”

“Big?” Steve said, and Sam said, “Okay, scoot into the middle here and tuck that edge of the tarp under the bag and under you,” and then he lay down in front of Steve and scooted right back up against him, back to chest, ass to —

Steve froze into perfect rigidity. Sam said, “Dude, big spoon needs to do the work.” He reached down and tugged Steve’s legs up snug behind his, grabbed Steve’s top arm and slung it around his own waist. He patted Steve’s hand. “We’re just going to sleep. Cuddle up and pretend I’m a teddy bear.”

“I’ve never wanted to _fuck_ a teddy bear,” Steve said faintly.

“Good information to have,” Sam said. “I like to know a guy’s kinks. And now, if you’re not going to fuck _me_ , shut up and go to sleep.”

Sam was just so good against him: big and solid, the smell of his skin starting to come through as they warmed each other up. The curve of his ass was tucked right up against Steve’s dick. Steve shut his eyes and tried to remind himself that he didn’t want any help, he didn’t want any friends, he _definitely_ didn’t want —

“To hell with it,” Steve said, and Sam said, “Oh, thank God,” and turned in his arms, and they were kissing.

They were both hard, but they weren’t in any rush once they got started: it felt good just to be warming each other up, and Steve couldn’t get enough of Sam’s mouth, his hands, the scruff of his narrow beard: he kept rubbing his cheek across it until Sam laughed, low and breathless. “Oh, so you like the beard, huh.”

“Anything _you_ like?” Steve murmured back, teasing, because Sam had been feeling up his chest pretty enthusiastically.

“Can’t blame a man for appreciating the scenic beauties of a national treasure,” Sam said blandly. “The park’s nice, too,” he added, and rubbed the heel of his hand over the nipple. Steve shivered luxuriously and leaned into it.

They kept kissing, touching, making out nice and slow, trying not to get too sweaty. The cold air felt good on Steve’s skin now, a chaser for the sweet glide of Sam’s hand. Their legs twined together and their hips slotted close, and Steve got to a point where he couldn’t help thrusting, gently, pushing his dick against the firm pressure. He felt Sam’s smile against his throat, and Sam reached down and took hold of him. He kept the pull nice and easy, and when he noticed that Steve was sensitive just under the head he got his thumb right there and pressed a little with every stroke. Steve wanted to return the favor, but he couldn’t manage anything more than hanging on for it, pushing into Sam’s hand. Heat kept rolling over him in waves, and then Sam said, low, “Get on your back,” and Steve turned over and Sam slid down and — “Oh, huh,” Steve said, and came in long shuddering waves.

“Sorry,” he said, when he could breathe again, but he couldn’t help putting his hands on Sam’s head at the same time, a silent plea to stay down there, to keep — _doing_ that, sucking him, even though Sam’s tongue tracing circles was almost unbearable. Steve’s dick was almost painfully sensitive. He wanted it anyway, and more of Sam’s beard against his _thighs_ , oh — he shuddered hard all over and came again. Sam slid off laughing after that one, wiping his mouth and coughing, prowling up over Steve’s body. “Damn, you’re greedy,” he said, sounding pretty smug.

“Can I have some more?” Steve said, too blissed out to argue.

“Oh, I think next one’s _mine_ ,” Sam said, but his idea was to snug his dick between Steve’s wet thighs and slide back and forth, bumping everything along the way, and Steve’s dick got tucked up against Sam’s belly, squeezed between them, so he was going to get another one out of it anyway. Sam was gasping and Steve grabbed his hand and put it on his nipple, and Sam roughed him up a little, rubbing it back and forth, quick bursts of pleasure. Steve was getting hard again, close again, and Sam’s breath was getting that ragged, near-painful edge. “You want,” Steve said, and was glad it was so dark, “you want to—to come on my—?”

“ _Christ_ ,” Sam said, and propped himself up on hands and knees and grabbed his own dick and jerked it, furiously: half a dozen strokes and he was coming all over Steve’s chest, hot wet splatters across his nipples. Steve couldn’t help hiccups of laughter, half embarrassed and half proud of himself, and then he moaned as Sam groped a wet hand down and jerked him off too into the whole mess.

Sam sighed long and low, satisfied, and then he rubbed his hand through the whole slick and all over, smearing it around on Steve’s chest. Steve arched up into it, gasping; his nipples were almost painfully tight. “There,” Sam said, “that should do it.”

“Do what?” Steve said, shuddering.

“Make sure you have to take another ice water bath tomorrow morning,” Sam said.

“Hey!” Steve grabbed Sam and shoved him onto his back and climbed onto him, rubbing his sticky chest all over Sam’s, and Sam was laughing, breathless, and Steve forgot about getting him dirty and just kissed him and kissed him, endlessly; he didn’t want to stop.

#

The next morning they stood at the end of the pool and contemplated it unenthusiastically. The sun had come up into the clearing, but it was too early to have done much good. “You know,” Sam said, “there’s hot showers at the campsite about two hours’ flying time thataway,” and Steve struggled with temptation a moment, but he’d already lost a day.

“What’s the matter, afraid of a little cold water?” he said. Sam shook his head and said, “Age before beauty,” and shoved him in, then jumped in after, his face screwed up. They both came up whimpering. It was _colder_ than it had been yesterday afternoon.

They scrubbed off as fast as humanly possible and then drank instant coffee and ate hot oatmeal in front of their breakfast fire. They discussed the packing while they warmed up, and managed to get the pack into halfway decent shape with only a couple of tries. “I can manage it, anyway,” Steve said.

“I’ll try some of the places over to the east today, now you’re over the ridge,” Sam said, jerking a thumb in that direction as he slung the wingpack back on. “It’s a little further, but I can probably make it back before dark. Not that I’m complaining about the way last night worked out, but I’d just as soon have something better than a tarp overhead, since you’re not going to let anything like zero-degree water and a pack that a mule couldn’t carry keep you from your one-man mission to redo the last Parks Department survey in world-record time.”

He said it dryly, and Steve turned a little red, irresolute. The explanations trembled on his mouth. Sam was looking at him; his eyes went soft, and he leaned over and gave Steve a kiss, a good healthy one with his strong hand gripping the base of Steve’s neck, thumb sliding up and down a little. “Better get on it,” he said, gentle, with a quick pat to Steve’s cheek: permission not to tell him. He didn’t wait for an answer; he stood up and took a running start and was in the air.

Steve stood up to watch him winging down and across the ocean of trees: still magical, even after seeing it before. There was a knot of gratitude in his throat, and something else he wasn’t quite ready to call happiness. But the anger didn’t seem to want to come back, and Steve knew that tonight he _would_ tell Sam; he’d tell him everything. He couldn’t help but huff a little laugh at himself: he’d caved in less than three days. But he couldn’t be sorry. He smiled after Sam one more time, and then squinted: Sam was turning back towards him.

Steve wondered if he’d forgotten something, but Sam didn’t keep coming: he was circling around. Circling over something, dipping lower now like he wanted a closer look, and Steve took a useless step forward on a sudden wave of horror and said, “ _No_ ,” out loud, too late; too fucking late, oh God — and faintly across the miles of trees, he heard the stutter of gunfire, and the tiny winged figure in the distance folded into an arrow and went plunging down out of the sky.

Steve was already running, without conscious thought. He went flat out, scrambling down the trail so fast he tripped and tumbled head over heels a dozen times; he didn’t slow down at all, just got back on his feet as soon as he could, scraped and bleeding, and kept going. He hit the bottom of the mountain slope and tore into the trees, throwing himself full-speed ahead: there were bursts of gunfire — _please let him be alive,_ Steve prayed, running. _Please. I’m sorry, please_ — and he burst through the bushes and slammed into Sam, who was running like hell the other way, his wings folded up, and they went crashing together into the underbrush.

Steve managed to wrap his arms around Sam’s head and back to cushion the tumble. “God _dammit_ , Rogers!” Sam was yelling, even while they came out of the roll and sprawled flat with him glaring up. “I’m going to kick your—”

Steve bent down and cut him off with a hard desperate kiss, shuddering with relief, and then he yanked the shield off his back, covering them just before more gunfire came from the jungle. Sam crouched behind him and returned fire over his shoulders with two automatic pistols. “How many?” Steve said.

“Looked like a seven-man team,” Sam said. “I think I got one on the way down.”

“Take this,” Steve said, pulling him forward to take the shield — “Are you kidding me?” Sam said, grabbing onto the straps — “Keep under it, decoy them left,” Steve finished. “I’ll come up behind them.” He clapped Sam on the shoulder and made a fast dash right, staying low to the ground.

“Swear to God—” He heard Sam hiss from behind him, but he was moving right anyway, firing in bursts, and the gunfire was turning to follow his position. Steve made as tight a circle as he thought he could get away with, and found the Hydra team: six guys in grey camouflage and machine guns firing increasingly long bursts into the brush, looking confused, as well they might: with return fire that close, they would’ve gotten _some_ kind of hit by then if Sam hadn’t been behind the shield. Steve grinned wolfishly and sneaked up behind the one covering their rear, and lunged out at him fast from behind. He dragged him down into the brush and left him there with a broken neck.

He didn’t know what had brought them out of their rathole to be seen in the first place: it seemed pretty clear that the point of this base was to stay hidden in plain sight, another rotting cesspit tucked neatly under a smooth shining surface. But right now he didn’t give a damn: there would be more of them to get answers from on the inside. He jumped for a low-hanging branch and pulled himself into the tree cover. He dropped down on top of the guy covering their left flank, then made a flat-out run across to take the one on the right: he got there just as the guy started to turn his head to look. “Hey, you — ” the guy yelped, not much in the way of last words, and Steve turned with the guy’s gun as the three in front whirled in time to meet his strafing fire.

Sam charged out with the shield held forward, firing at the same time; between them all three went down hard and fast. Sam came barreling on past them and grabbed Steve by the front, which made it easy for Steve to drag Sam into his arms and kiss the hell out of him. Sam kept trying to say something for a little bit more, then gave up and just put his arms around Steve and pulled him in tight, kissing him back.

Steve finally stopped, still gripping Sam’s arms. “There’s a Hydra base,” he blurted.

Sam glared again, although it was half-hearted; he was panting. “Yeah,” he said, “I kind of figured that out when they started _shooting_ at me.”

Steve shuddered all over and pulled him in again. “I’m sorry,” he said, his face muffled against the crook of Sam’s neck. “Sam, I’m so sorry. It was supposed to be a covert base — ”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam said, grumbly, but he was rubbing Steve’s back. “So what’s the plan? I’m assuming there’s a plan, and not just you and your shield taking an entire base head-on.” He paused. “Is there a plan?”

“Uh, well,” Steve said, and then a massive explosion suddenly roared up about a quarter of a mile behind them through the trees, a pillar of smoke and fire erupting straight into the sky and the ground underneath shaking. A shockwave cloud of ash and burning leaves and scorching-hot pebbles roared past, pelting them as they ducked behind a tree, hiding their faces under the shield.

“Okay,” Sam said, shouting over the noise. “That’s a pretty good plan. How the hell did you arrange that?”

“I didn’t!” Steve yelled back, as the dust cloud swept past, and then they heard the screaming and gunfire bursts start.

“Stay close!” Steve said. Sam gave him back the shield, and he went into the settling dust half crouched, Sam on his heels. They moved in cautiously, but most of the screaming was already dying away. The shapes of people formed out of the smoke and dust as they moved in close, stretched out on the ground. Steve kept jerking to take aim and then realizing they were already dead: single gunshots to the head. The dust was getting thicker, then Sam grabbed him around the waist and hauled him back, as Steve nearly slipped over the edge of a giant crater. He tried to peer down. He could see bits of sparking wires, the remains of metal scaffolding and girders, broken concrete slabs. It went down a long way.

“Dude,” Sam said, coughing. “That’s what you were here for?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, trying to see if he could spot anyone alive.

“Well,” Sam said, “I guess somebody beat you to it,” and Steve turned and stared at him, suddenly. Sam stared back. “What? Don’t look at me, man; I didn’t have anything to do with this one.”

“No,” Steve said, his heart pounding. “I know.” He turned to look some more, but he couldn’t spot anyone moving at all. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Bucky?” There wasn’t any answer. The last gunfire had been over to the south: he was probably already out of earshot. Steve was about to take off running, but then he stopped and turned around. “Think you can get us a better view?”

Sam ratcheted out the wings with a quick double-jerk gesture and spread his arms wide in invitation. “Welcome aboard Falcon Air,” he said. Steve slung an arm around Sam’s neck and hung on as Sam launched them up with a grunt, circling up around the still-rising smoke cloud. From the air, Steve could make the destruction out better: a crisp deep square blown completely out of the ground, like Hydra had designed their base to geometric perfection. The explosion had been carefully designed, too: the base and nothing else taken out, so that even a few inches past the edge of the destruction, the tree cover was solid. There wasn’t a chance of spotting anyone on the ground here.

Steve pointed in the direction of the last shots he’d heard. “That way.” There was a river cutting across the forest a couple of miles to the west. From the air, they’d have a good shot of spotting Bucky as he crossed it.

“Yeah?” Sam said. “Do I get to know who we’re going after now?”

“A friend of mine,” Steve said.

“I thought all your friends were dead,” Sam said. “Swing over and lie on my back.”

“I might’ve miscounted,” Steve said, and kissed him deep and hard one last time before he changed position.

# End

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> All fb loved, here or [on tumblr](http://astolat.tumblr.com/post/92659945778/off-by-two-8832-words-by-astolat-chapters-1-1)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Off By Two](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5595097) by [RsCreighton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RsCreighton/pseuds/RsCreighton)




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